In the first demonstration of human brain-to-brain control, a scientist wearing an electrical brain-signal reading cap triggered motion in his colleague across campus.

[...]

On Aug. 12, University of Washington researcher Rajesh Rao sent the finger-flicking brain signal to his colleague, Andrea Stocco, in a demonstration of human-to-human brain signaling, according to a university announcement.

The announcement follows a rapid series of advances in the field of brain-computer interfaces, devices that read brain signals and typically try to translate them into motions in robotic prosthetic arms or legs. Paralyzed patients demonstrated the control of robot arms using signals from brain implants last year, for example. And researchers at Duke University and Harvard have demonstrated the transfer of brain signals between rats, and from a person to a rat, as well. So-called "transcranial magnetic stimulation," which sends magnetic pulses to the brain, has become a treatment for neurological ailments such as Parkinson's disease.

...Rajesh Rao sent the finger-flicking brain signal to his colleague, Andrea Stocco...

Chicka bow chicka bowowowowo.

You can bet your ass that will be the first marketable implementation, if the military doesn't acquire it and make it a black project._________________Deja Moo: the feeling that you've heard this bull before

In related science news, there is water inside the Moon, and cocaine stimulates rapid brain growth.

Wasn't that other way round

Not sure what you mean, but I wasn't being sarcastic; those are two other current news stories. Apparently we have discovered water inside in the moon, and independently it has been discovered that cocaine use stimulates incredibly rapid brain growth.

Unfortunately that brain growth seems to be related to drug-seeking behavior, but it's interesting nonetheless._________________Deja Moo: the feeling that you've heard this bull before

In related science news, there is water inside the Moon, and cocaine stimulates rapid brain growth.

Wasn't that other way round

Cocaine stimulates the Moon growth, and there is water inside the brain? Or that Moon is made of cocaine? Is that why NASA went there? One small line for a man, but giant high for mankind?_________________“If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him”

In related science news, there is water inside the Moon, and cocaine stimulates rapid brain growth.

Wasn't that other way round

Not sure what you mean, but I wasn't being sarcastic; those are two other current news stories. Apparently we have discovered water inside in the moon, and independently it has been discovered that cocaine use stimulates incredibly rapid brain growth.

Unfortunately that brain growth seems to be related to drug-seeking behavior, but it's interesting nonetheless.

No, with my generally sarcastic posting, and with the some of insane stuff I say, you were probably right to assume I was just going off. _________________Deja Moo: the feeling that you've heard this bull before

Isn't "science" in the US just R&D for commercial or military use nowadays? I mean, how many of those research facilities do science only to push the limits of our knowledge? Parts of Fermilab maybe ...

They could talk about how they are improving the well being of the human kind, but I don't think so, they just want to get rich by selling it to a corporation that will make it too expensive for anyone with a standard healthcare program to be able to afford it, assuming he even has healthcare.

Or maybe they'll sell it to the government to "protect us", because the government could do its "job" so much easier if it controlled us directly. What was the job of the government again?

Isn't "science" in the US just R&D for commercial or military use nowadays? I mean, how many of those research facilities do science only to push the limits of our knowledge? Parts of Fermilab maybe ...

They could talk about how they are improving the well being of the human kind, but I don't think so, they just want to get rich by selling it to a corporation that will make it too expensive for anyone with a standard healthcare program to be able to afford it, assuming he even has healthcare.

Or maybe they'll sell it to the government to "protect us", because the government could do its "job" so much easier if it controlled us directly. What was the job of the government again?

Isn't "science" in the US just R&D for commercial or military use nowadays? I mean, how many of those research facilities do science only to push the limits of our knowledge? Parts of Fermilab maybe ...

Fermilab? They had to shut down the Tevatron two years ago and since then they are dreaming of a proposed Project X. There is only one of those labs left in the USA that is noticeable, namely BNL. However, BNL cannot run their accelerator continuously because (besides regular maintenance and similar tasks) they can no longer pay their electricity bill. It is only a matter of time until BNL will be closed as well. It is really that bad.

Ever heard of CERN? Inventing "useless" particle names since 1954. Oh, and also contributed to the birth to the WWW, just a byproduct (they just needed a way to write reports). Btw, did I tell you that the main node for half of the European Internet traffic located there is not even guarded? Just one glass door is protecting Europe from an Internet blackout.

@wildhorse, some of my colleagues still go to Fermilab occasionally to do research, so it's not completely dead, but yes, it has lost most of its glory.

Isn't "science" in the US just R&D for commercial or military use nowadays? I mean, how many of those research facilities do science only to push the limits of our knowledge? Parts of Fermilab maybe ...

"In the U.S." and "funded by U.S. taxpayers" are two different things. The U.S. has a massive philanthropic economic network that is entirely extragovernmental (except for the taxes the Government vultures tear from between their ribs).

Also, anybody who thinks corporations getting rich is at odd with improving the human condition has been brainwashed. Marketing, at it's core, is "the identification and fulfillment of an unsatisfied need". When there's an incentive to do that, it happens pretty effectively and efficiently. Governments aren't efficient or effective at anything.

Government research didn't establish international trade and knowledge sharing, create the industrial revolution, or invent most of the things that have increased our general standard of living over time. Contrary to popular beliefs, they also haven't been been responsible for the big disease cures (polio, for example, was cured by charitable foundations).

Big, authoritarian collectivist governments like to indoctrinate their slaves with the idea that they are the font from which all things good flow, but the truth is that about the only thing they do that wouldn't happen automatically some other way without them is start wars and kill people.

I will grant that this is a generalization, and there are many cases of governments effectively stepping where market incentives are lacking, through grants, for example, to provide the necessary incentives to solve certain problems. But, if you look closely, you'll find that beyond simply allocating funds, the government role is pretty much non-existent. Universities and most research labs are in fact businesses (non-profits and not-for profits, even those initially planned and organized by governments, are still businesses and they engage in the same marketing processes, including identification of the unsatisfied needs, that for-profit corporations do). Government involvement is only called for where market forces or charitable entities cannot solve a problem on their own, and their involvement only creates unnecessary bureaucratic burdens and overhead costs (the Government is a jobs program, for the most part).

In fact, governments almost never come up with a research idea on their own; they get their ideas from proposals. The actual research organizations (including those like CERN) are run much like regular, profit-seeking corporations, complete with marketing programs, accountants, boards of directors, and pointy-haired bosses, the only real difference being in accounting objectives. I worked for years in a government research center and also have experience in private corporations. I can tell you from firsthand experience that the administrators of government-funded research are just as much driven by metrics that have no direct relationship with helping humanity. Corporate executives worry about costs and profit. Government executives running research programs worry about covering their people (having adequate funding to keep the hamster-wheels spinning).

While the individual scientists involved in government-sponsored medical research might feel altruism about helping mankind or their society, the same is true of scientists working for private pharmaceutical corporations. The companies themselves have the same kinds of objectives as corporations, except they reinvest everything they earn in the growth of the company, and nobody gets profit-based bonuses. The executives running these organizations make salaries similar to CEOs of private corporations of similar scale._________________Deja Moo: the feeling that you've heard this bull before

Ever heard of CERN? Inventing "useless" particle names since 1954. Oh, and also contributed to the birth to the WWW, just a byproduct (they just needed a way to write reports). Btw, did I tell you that the main node for half of the European Internet traffic located there is not even guarded? Just one glass door is protecting Europe from an Internet blackout.

@wildhorse, some of my colleagues still go to Fermilab occasionally to do research, so it's not completely dead, but yes, it has lost most of its glory.

Sad as it may be, without commercial and military funding I doubt we would be advanced much beyond punch card computers. War accelerates technology pretty rapidly, as far as I see it. That was my point. CERN wouldn't even be a twinkle in anyone's winkle, let alone a reality, if it wasn't for the massive research done prior to and after the Trinity bomb.

So anyone drooling over the next boost in our technological development will probably have to wait until after the next all out war. Personally I can comfortably live my life in full before that happens.

Marketing, at it's core, is "the identification and fulfillment of an unsatisfied need".

That may be a definition, but it certainly isn't how it's done today, when marketing first makes you think/feel you have the need for something and then offers a fulfillment. Do you need a second car? Of course you don't, you either already have one or you can use public transportation, it's cheaper ans better for the environment. Do you need a big plasma TV that drains your time? No, you actually need to get out running to shave off those extra pounds you gained while watching TV. So often marketing is actually creating new "needs" and neglecting even the most basic ones at the same time.

I am sorry to hear you were in such an environment, my research lab is really run by people that certainly don't do it for profit.

As for medical corporations, do you honestly believe they will try to completely cure you? They would lose you as a customer, a source of further profit. They might just relieve the symptoms for some time, to give you the impression that "you were cured".

@sikpuppy, I must admit you have a very good point there However, I still believe that curiosity is one of the main motivations for those projects today.

Isn't "science" in the US just R&D for commercial or military use nowadays? I mean, how many of those research facilities do science only to push the limits of our knowledge? Parts of Fermilab maybe ...

They could talk about how they are improving the well being of the human kind, but I don't think so, they just want to get rich by selling it to a corporation that will make it too expensive for anyone with a standard healthcare program to be able to afford it, assuming he even has healthcare.

Or maybe they'll sell it to the government to "protect us", because the government could do its "job" so much easier if it controlled us directly. What was the job of the government again?

Marketing, at it's core, is "the identification and fulfillment of an unsatisfied need".

That may be a definition, but it certainly isn't how it's done today, when marketing first makes you think/feel you have the need for something and then offers a fulfillment. Do you need a second car? Of course you don't, you either already have one or you can use public transportation, it's cheaper ans better for the environment. Do you need a big plasma TV that drains your time? No, you actually need to get out running to shave off those extra pounds you gained while watching TV. So often marketing is actually creating new "needs" and neglecting even the most basic ones at the same time.

Like you, most people are unaware of what marketing is, or that there are people who do it, beyond what they're exposed to: promotion. Promotion (of which advertising is a part), is just one fraction of what marketing entails.

It virtually impossible to create new needs. People who think companies are creating new needs don't actually understand what need is being satisfied. For example, Disney making children feel like they just absolutely must have a Hanna Montana locker magnet are not creating a new need for locker magnets; they are selling fulfillment of every pre-teen's unsatisfied need for social acceptance. Similarly, new technologies simply better satisfy existing needs, they don't create a new need._________________Deja Moo: the feeling that you've heard this bull before

It virtually impossible to create new needs. People who think companies are creating new needs don't actually understand what need is being satisfied. For example, Disney making children feel like they just absolutely must have a Hanna Montana locker magnet are not creating a new need for locker magnets; they are selling fulfillment of every pre-teen's unsatisfied need for social acceptance. Similarly, new technologies simply better satisfy existing needs, they don't create a new need.

Profound and accurate. Well done, BK._________________There is no god but Bach, Beethoven is the messenger of Bach.

If you and people like you truly believe what you wrote BK, I don't think your country can ever recover from its current descent.

The locker magnet you speak of doesn't satisfy the actual need, because it doesn't make her socially accepted. It just temporarily fulfills her desire to be socially accepted. I'm not sure if you're a parent, but if you are, I think you'd rather have your daughter to be socially accepted than for her to watch movies with H. Montana all day.

Nobody in your country would have used cars or women wouldn't have smoked cigarets, unless a relative of Freud, Eddie Bernays, hadn't used techniques to make men think that a car was an extension of their phallus or that smoking a cigaret would make a woman on par with men, as it would be their "own phallus". There was a documentary on him somewhere in the "The Century of Self" series, if you need something to occupy your plasma TV.
He never satisfied their actual needs, instead he just gave them a surrogate to fulfill their desires at a high price which satisfied his own needs of getting paid.
The people later died of lung cancer or in a car crash (and today poison our atmosphere by using safer cars), which most certainly was against their most basic needs to live.

If you and people like you truly believe what you wrote BK, I don't think your country can ever recover from its current descent.

The locker magnet you speak of doesn't satisfy the actual need, because it doesn't make her socially accepted. It just temporarily fulfills her desire to be socially accepted. I'm not sure if you're a parent, but if you are, I think you'd rather have your daughter to be socially accepted than for her to watch movies with H. Montana all day.

Nobody in your country would have used cars or women wouldn't have smoked cigarets, unless a relative of Freud, Eddie Bernays, hadn't used techniques to make men think that a car was an extension of their phallus or that smoking a cigaret would make a woman on par with men, as it would be their "own phallus". There was a documentary on him somewhere in the "The Century of Self" series, if you need something to occupy your plasma TV.
He never satisfied their actual needs, instead he just gave them a surrogate to fulfill their desires at a high price which satisfied his own needs of getting paid.
The people later died of lung cancer or in a car crash (and today poison our atmosphere by using safer cars), which most certainly was against their most basic needs to live.

Read all before responding.

Human behavior is complex and products often satisfy (or are pitched as being able to satisfy) multiple needs. You over-simplify. Cars primarily satisfied a need for transportation, and they did it far better than horses and buggies. If you think people wouldn't have used cars unless they thought it was penis-like, you are a mistaken. Cigarettes were marketed primarily based on their very real ability to change how you feel, and secondarily, at the brand level, as a personal statement (which is something used to market many competitive products, from beer to smartphones).

Also, you seem to somehow think I'm trying to argue that this is all a great thing or how it ought to be. I'm not. I'm just telling you how it is. I've taken five courses in marketing. It's done quite scientifically by big companies. The strategic decisions companies make, including analysis of competing products, what products to make, what the characteristics of those products should be, what their prices should be, where they should be sold, how they should be distributed, how they should be promoted and advertised, how they should change over time -- it's all marketing. There is an entire field dedicated to the research aspect of it alone, which ties in aspects of economics, sociology, psychology, engineering, manufacturing, logistics, and advanced statistics.

Over time, important lessons have been learned. One of those lessons is that it's critical to actually identify the real needs being satisfied and that you can't "create a new need". It's a classic marketing lesson, backed up by research and taught to people using case study after case study. You can indeed create the perception of a new need. But, if you think you're creating a new need, you're doing it wrong and likely to fail, because this means you probably don't understand what's really going on.

If you doubt me, don't take my word for it, do some reading._________________Deja Moo: the feeling that you've heard this bull before